1. Field of the Invention
The instant invention pertains to an immunofixation electrophoresis technique.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Immunofixation electrophoresis (IFE) is a two stage procedure using agarose gel protein electrophoresis in the first stage and immunoprecipitation in the second. The specimen may be serum, urine or cerebral spinal fluid. There are numerous applications for IFE in research, forensic medicine, genetic studies and clinical laboratory procedures. The greatest demand for immunofixation electrophoresis is in the clinical laboratory where it is primarily used for the detection and identification of immunoglobulins involved in monoclonal gammopathies.
Alfonso (1) first described immunofixation in the literature in 1964. Alper et al. (2) published a more practical procedure in 1969 as a result of their work devoted to the detection of genetic polymorphisms of ceruloplasmin and Gc-globulin and the conversion of C3 during activation. They later extended their studies to genetic polymorphisms of complement components and the identification of alpha.sub.l antitrypsin phenotypes (3,4). Immunofixation was first introduced as a procedure for the study of immunoglobulins in 1976 (5,6). There are numerous other references pertaining to the immunofixation procedure (e.g., 7-10).
The most sophisticated immunofixation electrophoresis procedure at present involves applying a sample to several application sites on an electrophoretic gel; electrophoresing the gel; severing the protein pattern portion from the remaining portion of the gel; fixing the proteins in this severed portion of the electrophoretic gel; applying distinct antiserum to the remaining electrophoresed portions present on the gel and incubating the resulting gel; washing the incubated gel; drying the washed gel; staining the dryed gel; destaining the stained gel; drying the destained gel; and analyzing the dryed gel.
One drawback to this procedure is that the severed fixed protein portion of the gel could be misplaced or lost in addition to the inconvenience involved in initially severing the protein portion from the remainder part of the gel.
Accordingly, it would be very advantageous to have an immunofixation electrophoresis procedure wherein the protein portion of the gel need not be separated from the gel prior to the fixation of the proteins therein.